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Japan’s National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) has detailed the software used to make their robot dance (see some nice photos over at Pink Tentacle) in a recent press release.  The software, dubbed Choreonoid (Choreography and Humanoid), is similar to conventional computer animation software.  Users create key poses and the software automatically interpolates the motion between them.  What makes the software unique is that it also corrects the poses if they are mechanically unstable, such as modifying the position of the feet and waist, allowing anyone to create motions compatible with the ZMP balancing method.  This is especially important for robots like the HRP-4C, where complicated motions could easily cause it to fall over.

Bipedal humanoid robots can step over obstacles and negotiate stairs where their wheeled counterparts cannot, but this comes with the risk of falling down.  Naturally, humanoid robots will never be accepted in society if they break when they fall down.  The bigger the robot, the more likely it is that it will damage itself during a fall and be unable to get up. In 2003 the HRP-2P was the first full-scale humanoid that could fall over safely and get back up, and so far remains alone; not even Honda’s ASIMO can do this.  As soon as it detected that it was falling, the HRP-2P would bend its knees and back, which helped to reduce the ground impact.  This motion, called “UKEMI”, is quite similar to how the SONY QRIO would react when falling over to reduce the risk of damaging its components.

Cooking is an art sometimes forgotten in the robotics world, but James, the PR2 robot, and Rosie, another robot from CoTeSys (Cognition for Technical Systems) in Munich have joined forces to show that robots can be of great use in the kitchen as well. They made some pretty successful-looking pancakes and used various tools around the Assisted Kitchen to show off their skills. The main chef in the experiment was Rosie, who used her broad arms and high levels of dexterity to flip and cook the pancakes. As you can see in the video, she is a bit on the slow side, but she’s also extra careful and gets it done right. She is capable of adjusting the way she pours the batter based on the weight of the bowl, demonstrating some impressive planning and a good use of her sensors, which allow the bot to recognize how much batter she has already poured.

Events such as natural disasters, military actions, and public safety threats have led to an increased need for robust robots — especially ones that can travel across complex terrain in any dimension. The ability to scale vertical building surfaces or other structures offers unique capabilities in military applications such as urban reconnaissance, sensor deployment, and setting up urban network nodes. SRI's novel clamping technology, called compliant electroadhesion, has enabled the first application of this technology to wall-climbing robots that can help with these situations.  As the name implies, electroadhesion is an electrically controllable adhesion technology. It involves inducing electrostatic charges on a wall substrate using a power supply connected to compliant pads situated on the moving robot. SRI has demonstrated robust clamping to common building materials including glass, wood, metal, concrete, etc. with clamping pressures in the range of 0.5 to 1.5 N per square cm of clamp (0.8 to 2.3 pounds per square inch). The technology works on conductive and non-conductive substrates, smooth or rough materials, and through dust and debris. Unlike conventional adhesives or dry adhesives, the electroadhesion can be modulated or turned off for mobility or cleaning. The technology uses a very small amount of power (on the order of 20 microwatts/Newton weight held) and shows the ability to repeatably clamp to wall substrates that are heavily covered in dust or other debris.

Continuing to work on a humanoid helper robot called ARMAR, the Collaborative Research Center 588: Humanoid Robots at the University of Karlsruhe began planning ARMAR-IIIa (blue) in 2006. It has 43 degrees of freedom (torso x3, 2 arms x7, 2 hands x8, head x7) and is equipped with position, velocity, and force sensors.  The upper-body has a modular design based on the average dimensions of a person, with 14 tactile sensors per hand.  Like the previous versions, it moves on a mobile platform.  In 2008 they built a slightly upgraded version of the robot called ARMAR-IIIb (red).  Both robots use the Karlsruhe Humanoid Head, which has 2 cameras per eye (for near and far vision).  The head has a total of 7 degrees of freedom (neck x4, eyes x3), 6 microphones, and a 6D inertial sensor.

Developed by Japan’s National Agriculture and Food Research Organization and other local institutions, the robot may sound boring (when compared to humanoids, for example), but it’s actually pretty cool. The main bullet points are that it automatically detects how ripe the strawberries are (which fruit is ready for harvesting) and that it cuts the stalks without damaging the strawberries.

You may think that all of those crazy robot competitions that we like to cover are just fun and games, but there’s a serious side. Really, there is. For reals. Mindful of this, ROBO-ONE held the second annual Humanoid Helper Project last weekend, where teleoperated human-sized robots completed (or attempted to complete) three seemingly simple tasks, including pouring liquid from a plastic bottle into a cup, carrying ping-pong balls on a tray, and a 30 minute endurance race. I don’t know about you, but the last two would be a bit of a challenge for me, and they certainly were for the robots:

The latest episode of the Robots podcast interviews Dr. Alvar Saenz-Otero from MIT on the SPHERES project. SPHERES (Synchronized Position Hold Engage and Reorient Experimental Satellites) are basketball-sized satellites able to fly in and maintain formation at nanometer precision. In the second part of this episode we continue our quest for a good definition of a robot by looking at a well-known definition dating back to 1979. Read on or tune in!

When will human-level AIs finally arrive? We don’t mean the narrow-AI software that already runs our trading systems, video games, battlebots and fraud detection systems. Those are great as far as they go, but when will we have really intelligent systems like C3PO, R2D2 and even beyond? When will we have Artificial General Intelligences (AGIs) we can talk to? Ones as smart as we are, or smarter? Well, as Yogi Berra said, “it’s tough to predict, especially about the future.” But what do experts working on human-level AI think? To find out, we surveyed a number of leading specialists at the Artificial General Intelligence conference (AGI-09) in Washington DC in March 2009. These are the experts most involved in working toward the advanced AIs we’re talking about. Of course, on matters like these, even expert judgments are highly uncertain and must be taken with multiple grains of salt — nevertheless, expert opinion is one of the best sources of guidance we have. Their predictions about AGI might not come true, but they have so much relevant expertise that we should give their predictions careful consideration.

The Care-O-bot® research initiative aims at making Care-O-bot® 3 available as high-tech research platform. The main objectives to reach this goal are to provide a common open source repository for the hardware platform provide simulation models of hardware components provide remote access to the Care-O-bot® 3 hardware platform

The aptly-named StickyBot is a gecko-like robot that can climb smooth surfaces using its feet, which are covered in small, dry rubbery hairs (called setae on the gecko) which provide enough surface tension for dry adhesion. While the original StickyBot has 4 toes per foot, the team at Stanford has created the SB2 which has only 2 toes per foot while still retaining its climbing ability.

Within the next three years, the U.S. military will test the feasibility of sending a quadruped robot out into the field as a trusty pack mule to carry supplies for its troops, wherever they go. If the testing goes well for Boston Dynamics's Legged Squad Support System (LS3), company founder Marc Raibert will have come a long way from the one-legged hopping robots he pioneered in the 1980s. Actually Raibert has already come a long way, to the point where the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's (DARPA) Tactical Technology Office and the U.S. Marine Corps awarded his company a 30-month, $32-million contract last week to deliver a prototype LS3. This would be the first step in fulfilling the military's call for an autonomous, legged robot that can carry up to 181 kilograms of supplies for at least 32 kilometers without refueling.

Robots have revolutionized the factory. What about the field? Over the past century, agriculture has seen an explosion in productivity, thanks to things like mechanization, synthetic fertilizers, selective breeding, and, of course, pesticides -- lots of it. But it remains to be seen what role robots will play in working the fields. Automation was possible in factories because tasks were repetitive and the environment well-defined. A robot arm welding a car chassis does the exact same job over and over. When it comes to crops, though, everything changes: the environment is unstructured and tasks -- like picking a fruit -- have to be constantly readjusted.

The potential for the QTC material to transition from an insulator to a conductor (i.e. change its electrical property) is influenced by how much deformation the material is experiencing as a result of the applied mechanical pressure. QTC can be used to produce low profile, low cost, pressure activated switches or sensors that display variable resistance with applied force and return to a quiescent state when the force is removed. The difference between a QTC switch and a QTC sensor is arguably only the speed and amount of physical input required to achieve the required switching point or resistance range.

The purpose of this essay is to examine whether or not there would be practical reasons for creating a conscious, emotional machine.  I will not delve to deeply into whether or not it is possible to create such a machine, as the argument as to what exactly would constitute a living conscious machine seems largely unsettled.  Rather I will concentrate on whether or not we should create such a machine, if the possibility becomes available to us.  Are there uses for such a machine that could not be satisfied by a complex automaton?  Is there anything about real emotional response that would be necessary for a machine to operate autonomously, and still interact with human beings?  What are the dangers? What are the ethical ramifications? It is questions such as these that will be the interest of this paper.

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